"Paying a monthly Fee is stupid" - No..no it's not.

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well actually it is a rip off if you are an average gamer. Unless you are going to dedicate time to playing the MMO and only that game which a lot of people can't then it is a rip off. Yes 15 euro a month if I only played WoW is slightly less than I have on average spent on games a year over the course of my life. Although if I wanted to flit between WoW and those games it could easily double my Gaming budget.

For the dedicated MMO gamer it is quite economic and I will admit that but since I am not willing to dedicate so much time to a MMO it is for me a rip off. I do see the reason why fees exist or microtransactions and I accept that but I can't really afford the former as already stated.

 

[Kavic86]

The reason I really don't play MMO's is not because of the monthly cost. It used to be until I got a job, but now its because they are all the same. You have to go out and kill 20 baby dino's and bring back 10 dog bones. On top of all that you have to ready every single part of the storyline and quests so its eventually just you clicking through everything just to hurry up and go kill more dino's for those damn dog bones.

Now if they would just voice act every piece of dialog then I wouldn't have to read through everything, at first its ok but when your playing the game and after 20 hours of reading everything it gets pretty boring as the quests are pretty much the same just insert creature name here or item here or person to kill\find\find and kill. (not 20 hours nonstop, I'm not korean... ((drum noises)) )

So yeah the monthly fee IMO is not a problem if the product was less repetitive.

 

[Gudrests]

Actually, I wonder why MMOs charge for the original game. They should treat it like they're dealing drugs. Sell the game at cost (or a free download), give them a free trial, hook them and start collecting a monthly fee.

But I'd rather buy a budget game once a month and play something new.

WoW kinda does that now get a "trial" or "recruit a friend" and the 1st one is free...

 

[Treblaine]

When you pay for a regular game you get a certain amount of content for a certain amount of money....

....Now if you take an MMO, you have hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay. PvP, crafting, leveling, raiding, etc. Even if you only play a couple days a week, the dollar per gameplay hour ratio is way way way higher than a normal game.

You seem to be conflating amount of CONTENT and amount of TIME spent.

Hundreds of hours on MMORPG is not worth "the time you spend" if you are grinding through the same content over and over and over again.

WoW costs you enough for the game, and cost you more for new content. The content is ALL THERE, on your hard drive, you paid for. The monthly fee is just connecting you all together on servers.

The monthly fee is justified by one thing: because they can. It's their network, their servers, they can charge whatever people will pay. WoW is just addictive as hell, so they can and over 10 million do pay.

I KNOW how addictive things can be, how you can just get comfortable in one game, happy to spend all your game budget and all your gaming time in one game but will you be truly satisfied? Will you have many memories of this time in gaming?

$15 per month adds up to $180 per year for ONE GAME!!!

Have you any idea how many games I can get for that in Steam Sales and other deals? For god sake man, VARIETY!

 

[Orry]

Two words: Guild Wars

I wish Guild Wars had a monthly fee. That game was great, then they ran out of cash and stopped making new content so they could get GW2 out.

Guild Wars cranks out new content all the time, there may be no more expansions coming out but they're bridging the first and second games by fleshing out the backstory for the sequel with questlines and missions, new weapons, heroes etc. They're also dillegently patching, updating and balencing all the time (Dervishes just had a total overhaul). They fund all this business not with monthly fees but by providing optional, purely aesthetic purchases that don't give one player the advantage over another such as costumes and side mission packs as well as character slots. All this while working on a gigantic sequel.

Pffffhahahahahaha

Are you serious? Microtransactions?

That's hilarious. I'll take a monthly fee over microtransactions.

When the micro-transactions are cosmetic.... All the actual content is free after Eye of the North. (Zinn's Task, War in Kryta, Hearts of the North, Winds of Change, Embark Beach, unannounced possible future updates....)

 

[Anchupom]

Well I don't play MMO's because of the monthly fees. It's not because I think they're stupid, I fully understand why you would have to pay. I don't play the £15 (or whatever) a month because
1) I like to buy games fairly often (for that £15 I could get one, maybe two descent pre-owned titles) and because of this I spend my time jumping from game to game, meaning they never get stale.
2) I only have a laptop, which isn't really ideal for gaming.
3) I'm not all that big on online play (with the exception of fighting games) and prefer singleplayer.
4) Sometimes I barely find time to play games at all, meaning that I could be throwing away money (granted that's only if I'm not paying a month at a time)
If I ever got a descent set up I'd probably consider starting a pay monthly MMO, as I do think games like Warcraft look quite fun, but it's unlikely, I'm happy to spend my £15 a month on other things.

This.

Additionally, I had this conversation with one of my friends the other day and we reached a similar conclusion.
Then I pulled the trumpcard of the "value for money" by mentioning Minecraft - a game that costs little over £10 and yet both of us are addicted to. One-off fees, very cheap, I have more gameplay hours on that since January than I do on ACB since Christmas.

 

[Marowit]

I have a brother-in-law who gave me that argument, but I never really understood it because he'd spend ~$120/month on 360 games.

I play WoW, and the $15/month is plenty worth the time/content I get to enjoy. But, I don't understand people who pay $60 for 4-8hrs of single player either. Different strokes for different folks my friend, and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well if people like it why not sell it, hell some people buy bottled water for $55...

But as MMO's are designed to waste your time and keep you grinding for thousands of hours the monthly fee feels like a direct stab at your wallet.

 

[Shycte]

Umad?

Anyway, people might not want to pay 15 $ a week because they are not used to it. I don't think it has anything to do with not being able to afford it. Some might have principles against it.

I say, if you like it. Pay for it.

 

[Vrach]

Funny.

Guild Wars.

Not an MMO you say?

Fine.

Guild Wars 2.
Also Free to play after purchase.

=====

OK OK. For smaller developers it makes sense.

If GW2 doesn't turn to MTs... well, I'll believe it when I see it.

The first GW was a very lacking game in a lot of departments - I'm not saying it was a bad game, I loved playing it for a while, but it cut a lot of corners and was more akin to normal multiplayer games than an MMO, which is why it was never hugely surprising to see it be FTP.

However, GW2 is scrapping a lot of those concepts, from what I see anyway, which is gonna lead to them needing more serious amounts of money to profit from the game. If it does turn to MTs, I'll consider that ok, but I don't call that free to play really. You end up paying in the end one way or another and MTs actually have a capability of getting you to pay more than you would by a monthly subscription if you really wanna have the access to the game as a whole (remember, something ppm MMOs have as default?).

If GW2 does however pull off surviving on box sales alone, doesn't cut any corners and doesn't shut down it's servers due to inability to keep them up and turn a profit - I'll give one big tip of my hat to it's publishers and developers

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

When you pay for a regular game you get a certain amount of content for a certain amount of money....

....Now if you take an MMO, you have hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay. PvP, crafting, leveling, raiding, etc. Even if you only play a couple days a week, the dollar per gameplay hour ratio is way way way higher than a normal game.

You seem to be conflating amount of CONTENT and amount of TIME spent.

Hundreds of hours on MMORPG is not worth "the time you spend" if you are grinding through the same content over and over and over again.

WoW costs you enough for the game, and cost you more for new content. The content is ALL THERE, on your hard drive, you paid for. The monthly fee is just connecting you all together on servers.

The monthly fee is justified by one thing: because they can. It's their network, their servers, they can charge whatever people will pay. WoW is just addictive as hell, so they can and over 10 million do pay.

I KNOW how addictive things can be, how you can just get comfortable in one game, happy to spend all your game budget and all your gaming time in one game but will you be truly satisfied? Will you have many memories of this time in gaming?

$15 per month adds up to $180 per year for ONE GAME!!!

Have you any idea how many games I can get for that in Steam Sales and other deals? For god sake man, VARIETY!

No one is saying it is not a lot of money on one game but it does cost a lot to run servers for persistent worlds constantly so it is not just making you pay out of nowhere everything needs to be payed for in someway. Ever single server you have ever played on is payed for by someone whether that person is renting it with their own money, running it off their computer or taking subs from a massive pool of people.

 

[JudgeRicand]

I Maintain a WoW Account, and EVE account, and very soon I will have a Rift account. $45 a month seems like a steal to me.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Two words: Guild Wars

one word: Vindictus

but the point is this there's MMOs you don't gotta pay for, an only have to pay for once, but yeah $15 a month is easy to manage, >.> but i also found i can have just as much fun with out the monthly fee

 

[Csae]

Not really.

MMOs inflate their gaming hours by having extremely repetitive and mundane tasks done a thousand times.

Paying 15$/mo to spend 3/4ths of my time doing the exact same thing and "grinding" isn't really the same as 50$ /50hrs of storyline with cinematics plot twists and new twists every odd level.

A normal game will pace you, teach you things along the way, give you new abilitys, MMOs inflate this and stretch it to the breaking point in some cases. (See MapleStory) So its not quite the same.

The execption are the really good MMOs, but those are rare. Also i don't consider WoW an execption even if its one of the most succesfull mmos, because i have played it, several times, and its extremely repetitive, Cataclysm helped, somewhat... bearly.

 

[WanderingFool]

I dont really get into MMOs that much, to long and tedious in many cases. If its free, Ill give it a shot, and maybe ill come back after a few months and play it some more. The $15 dollers though makes it feel like I have to play it.

I dont know how to really explain it better than monthly subscription fees being in the middle.
- On one side, there is the instant satisfaction, which is something like buying a dinner at a resturant; it may cost the same, but it only lasts for a short time, and than its done.
- On the other side, you have the long term, which (for my example) is a DVD, that can give me a satisfied feeling over a much longer period of time. If I dont feel like watching the movie, I can put it on a shelf for a few weeks or months. Than, if I do feel like watching it, I can go and grab it off the shelf. This is where I put most of the games I own as well.

For monthly fees, I see them as being between these two extremes, they have a long duration like the other games, but unlike them, I cant just put it aside. Sure, I could stop playing the game after a while and just let the sub run out, but if I want to play it again later, I than have to pay another $15 to reopen my account and log on. And like I said early, I really dont get into MMOs for long periods of time (off topic, but I find my reason for not getting into MMOs stems from my first experience with MMOs, WOW, and the disasterous effect it had on my school grades.)

So thats why I only really care for MMOs with no monthly fee, as I can play it, leave, and come back with no worry about having to pay again.

The fact Im a college student with only so much money to my name and the terror of the school loans bill coming after graduation also affects my reasoning...

 

[Arizona Kyle]

I just always figured that those were complaints from kids who didn't have jobs, but really wanted to play the game. Once you are working, $15 a month isn't that big a deal.

Unless you're working in the creative industry, then it's two days of food.

ha ha ha so true

 

[Okysho]

I wouldn't call it a ripoff, because you ARE getting something for your money (though it could probably be cheaper at least as far as WoW is concerned). But I for one simply don't want to pay for a game more than once. I suppose that for people who just want to invest a lot of time into one game the monthly fee makes sense, but I suspect that the average gamer doesn't want to spend that much time or money on a single game.

Case in point, EVE Online. I think it looks really neat, but I simply cannot justify putting in the necessary time and money. I could play a whole bunch of other games and probably have a better time because its constantly something new. On the other hand, I will fire up CS every few nights because there is no obligation for me to dedicate to it. I can go long stretches without touching it and jump back in whenever I want. MMOs are too lifestyle-ish for this approach.

This right here, is actually WHY I play free MMOs. I don't always have the time to dedicate to the game. If I pay $15 a month for MMO subscription, you can guarantee that (with me at least) $12 of those dollars are probably going to waste. I only play once a week.

This being said, I've dedicated myself to Nexon's Maginobi (the father of Vindictus) It's free to play and nexon has a clever way of keeping themselves going. Via Nexon cash. Now there was a post about cash shop items earlier on and how they break the game, I believe that it's only partially true with Mabi, while yes pets (which is the main cash shop item in Mabi, not weapons or armour) can help you in battle, they're not necessary. You can train yourself up just as strong to cover for you and your pet. Every player has access to all the game's skills (though some you have to earn through gameplay) and access to all the game's weapons and armour.

Now I myself have invested in some premium items, because I've dedicated a good 2 years (on and off playing) to this game. There's no obligations for me to go "Well shit I'd better play or else I'll have wasted half my monthly fee!"

That's my take on it.

 

[Shia-Neko-Chan]

So far, Vindictus = Free to play and much more fun than WoW and even DC universe. I should know, because I paid for WoW and was bored to tears and was moderately content when playing DC universe.

TF2, one time fee, played for hours and any time I want. It's moddable, so there are very many different experiences I can have with it.

Counter-Strike, paid for it once by mowing the lawn at the age of 12, still have it today and I've clocked countless hours into it.

StarCraft Broodwar and Starcraft 2 will never get boring. I've clocked countless hours into them.

Many many more games apply to this list of not needing a monthly fee to be good and varied, because that's all I'll play is games that don't need a monthly fee.

So yes, paying a monthly fee is hard to justify, especially when it's a game like WoW. Honestly, it does not magically give p2p mmo's more hours of gameplay then b2p games or f2p games.

*shrug*

 

[Treblaine]

No one is saying it is not a lot of money on one game but it does cost a lot to run servers for persistent worlds constantly so it is not just making you pay out of nowhere everything needs to be payed for in someway. Ever single server you have ever played on is payed for by someone whether that person is renting it with their own money, running it off their computer or taking subs from a massive pool of people.

OK, maybe back in 2004 MMO scale server structure were expensive but not any more, not $15 per USER per MONTH! Especially not on this scale where of course the economy of scale is so effective, $15 per YEAR is more appropriate.

I mean WoW servers are not particularly high performance, ping is never that good, nor the best tickrate. Linking together a hundred people in one instance isn't too expensive.

The thing is it costs SOMETHING and Blizzard has gotten away with $15 so far, why drop it? Look, people who spend THAT much time in such a time sink are not going to have a problem with $15, my problem isn't really with Blizzard it is with people who are so sad they will play only one game for years at a time. There stooges really, the games is designed to titillate, you won't ever "get bored" as it always promises more... the only way to get out is to have that human spark of wanting MORE!

Thing is people with that much time and money to burn would be far better off running their own server for a game. Yes your OWN SERVER costs as much to rent as a WoW subscription, like a high performance 24-slot Team Fortress 2 server with full admin control and all the perks that come with that.

IF Blizzard were to allow you you you host your own WoW universe and just invite our friends. If you knew and admin you could book a dungeon raid for a fair price.